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UPCOMING HOLIDAYS: SPRING BREAK - 4/3 to 4/8 (CLOSED), EASTER SUNDAY - APRIL 16TH (CLOSED), MOTHER'S DAY - MAY 14 (OPEN), MEMORIAL DAY - MAY 29TH (CLOSED)
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It's Spring Time, Music Time!
The daylight has been saved, and here we are closing up March, officially into Spring. New sessions are underway for Meet Music & all rock bands/ensembles as we begin to ramp things up for the next big Concert extravaganza. Mark your calendars, if you have not already:
SPRING CONCERT
SUNDAY, JUNE 4TH @ 12pm
BOTHWELL ARTS CENTER
The official Spring Concert announcement is coming shortly, which will include all of the details & important information about how to be a part of it, and (of course) how to win awesome prizes, like 6 months of FREE music lessons, in our one-of-a-kind raffle.
But first, onward with other important announcements...
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SPRING BREAK & EASTER HOLIDAYS
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Following the calendar for the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District...
WE WILL BE CLOSED FOR SPRING BREAK:
MONDAY, APRIL 3RD
THROUGH
SATURDAY, APRIL 8TH
AND CLOSED FOR
EASTER SUNDAY ON
APRIL 16TH
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No matter what your age, instrument, or experience, we have a group for you.
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Several of our student bands are in need of additional members to round out the lineup. Please contact us (just respond to this email) if you have any questions or think you might know someone ready to give it a try.
Did you know that we have a band for adults? And we need a bassist, drummer & keyboardist/pianist!
We also have ensembles
that include horns!
No need to feel left out if you play trumpet, clarinet, sax, trombone, flute!
Have you ever considered trying bass?
You do not need to be enrolled in bass lessons to try playing bass in an ensemble. Many bass players start on other instruments like piano, guitar or violin. Although bass is lesser-known instrument, it a crucial part of bands in all genres. Once you try the fun of holding down the low end in the rhythm section alongside a grooving drummer, you may just wake up and find out that you are, to your surprise, a bassist (and loving it)!
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Congrats to Lauren Callahan! Lauren will receive not only priceless glory & endless bragging rights, but also gift certificates to Music Time Academy & Livermore Cinemas.
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Instrument: Trumpet, Piano, Ukulele, Trombone, Vibraphone
Teacher: Adam
Age: 12
Grade:
7th
School: East Avenue Middle School
Student Since: August 2016
Hobbies (besides music): Martial Arts, Swim Team, Art, Math Counts, Cat Lover
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It brings our staff joy and inspiration to work with students like Lauren. From the long list of instruments listed beside her name, you might have guessed that she is ALL about music!
Lauren not only loves to learn all about music, but what impresses us most of all is how she loves to share her joy of music with others. She spends her lunch at school mentoring the 6th grade band and she devotes her Friday afternoons after school to mentoring the Arroyo Seco Elementary School Band, all while keeping up with her academics enough to earn Principal's Honor Roll.
Although Lauren is the first chair trumpet player in both the East Avenue Middle School Band and Jazz Band, just this past month she began playing the vibraphone (a mallet percussion instrument, similar to the xylophone) in Jazz Band. Like a true musician, Lauren was able to apply her experience & skills to the new instrument quickly enough to be able to perform (on both vibraphone & trumpet) with the Jazz Band on March 28th. No stranger to performance, Lauren recently performed with a brass quintet in the Tri-Valley Solo/Ensemble Festival at Las Positas College, earning one of the highest honors, a Command Performance.
Yearning to learn more about music, Lauren has taken up the trombone recently, mostly teaching herself, with some help from another student in the band. This is yet another instrument in addition to trumpet & vibraphone as mentioned above, plus piano, ukulele and weekly music theory lessons.
Lauren will soon be auditioning for her 6th year with the National Guild of Piano Auditions, having earned National Fraternity of Student Musicians Award each year prior. This month Lauren applied for the Rotary Club Music Scholarship and is eagerly awaiting the results. We have a feeling she's going to do just fine.
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Nick Lyon-Wright & Room for Dream
In his 5+ years of teaching guitar, piano, voice, bass & ukulele at Music Time, Nick has been an inspiration to many students.
In this interview, Nick shares with us his experience of writing, recording & releasing an album of original compositions.
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What's the deal with your CD at the front desk?
The group that we have is called "Room for Dream" it is essentially, at least on the EP, me and Luna (another teacher at Music Time Academy). I wrote the songs. We recorded all the instruments for the album and did all the singing, did everything really.
I have wanted to record an album of my own songs for a very long time. But I would either not have a band, or it was too expensive or it was one of a hundred other excuses and in the end I never did it. Early last year I decided I was going to do an album of my songs, saving the money to record it, while Luna and I will play all the instruments ourselves.
The EP is called "A Little Taste". We are working on a full album, with a few other songs in the works that are almost done. When we finish everything, it should be an 11 song album, hopefully done at the end of this year. All the recording was done at New Improved Recording in Emeryville. The CD was engineered and mixed by my cousin, Matt Wright, who is a professional sound engineer at Prairie Sun Recording. He's been mixing for almost 11 years.
Can you give us a synopsis of the style of music?
There are a few different names I would give it. Art Pop or Power Pop. I tend to call it Pop music but it leans a little bit towards progressive rock. Some of the structures of the songs are more complex than your typical pop song, like 60's, 70's -esque pop music with a progressive rock influence. I am really into vocal harmonies. I like to write complex harmony arrangements with 2 and 3 and 4 part harmonies and use more jazzy harmonies than what you normally find in pop music. So it's a little more than just pop music.
What was your process for recording the music?
We would start out each song with just a basic track where Luna would lay down the drums. Next, I would either do the guitar or piano depending on the song. Then we over-dubbed everything else from there.
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Tell me a little bit about writing. How do you start writing, what is your process?
I don't always write every song the same way but usually I come up with a chord progression that has a melody that I sing over it to start. Sometimes there is a lyrical hook, and that is the first part that is created or there is a concept that I have that I want to write the song about. From there, a lot of times I finish almost all of the music before the lyrics and I usually spend a long time laboring over the lyrics until I get them to express the feeling that I want in the song.
When did you first start writing music?
I started writing music pretty soon after I started learning guitar at 18. I had probably been playing guitar for about 5 or 6 months. I actually recorded a CD with my dad pretty soon after learning how to play. It was probably about 11 years ago. It had a few of my very first songs on it. They are kind of dorky and I am kind of embarrassed of them, but they're out there.
Who were your major influences when you first started?
The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel. At that time I was pretty into Elton John. After I started learning a bit more I really got into Queen. There was a lot more after that, but you could say originally it was the 60's and 70's Beatles-esque pop music and sounds that were influenced by that.
How would you say your musical journey began?
I took a few guitar lessons as a kid, and had always tinkered around on the piano, plunking out a few songs here and there for fun. But as a kid, I was never trained. I set down the guitar for a while when I was young and did not pick it up again until I was 18.
Around that time my dad, who was a musician, heard me singing one day and pulled me aside, "Nick, you have a really nice voice, you should sing." And I thought, "Hey, that'd be cool, to sing and play guitar." So I picked the guitar back up and started practicing again. My dad encouraged me and taught me some chords. We had a book with a bunch of Beatles songs written up in it. It had the melodies with the chords on top, written out over the lyrics and everything. So I started out just learning all these Beatles tunes out of that book.
If you had some advice for students that are looking to start writing their own songs or that are writing their own songs, what would it be?
Write a lot, all the time. Go with things that inspire you. Try and find things that you are excited about. Start with what you are excited by and go from there. And then just keep writing so you can get better at it, you will get better at it. You are going to write stuff that five years later you will think is stupid. You have to just keep doing it so you can progress, and eventually you will come up with more things that you like. Keep at it and do not let yourself get stuck on one thing. If a song isn't happening move on to something else.
Also, learn songs that you like. Learn the chord changes and all the little tricks that make you like the song. Know what the melodies are. Once you know the licks from the songs you like they will be little tricks in your bag that you can use when you write. What you learn and like will come out in your writing and it will make your songwriting a lot better. That is probably the main thing that has helped me get better as a songwriter, learning all these cool chord progressions and melodies from songs that I like and then to see them come out in my writing in a really good way and often in a different context.
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FEATURED CONCERT:
Who:
Ravi Coltrane
Where:
Blue Note in Napa
When:
April 7th, 8th & 9th
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Praised for his music’s “elusive beauty” (DownBeat), and for his “style informed by tradition but not encumbered by it” (Philadelphia City Paper), saxophonist RAVI COLTRANE takes a bold step in his creative journey with Spirit Fiction, his Blue Note Records debut.
Spirit Fiction features two different band lineups, each with a unique expressive urgency. Several tracks feature Ravi’s long-term quartet with pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Drew Gress and drummer E.J. Strickland. Coltrane also enlisted a quintet featuring trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist Geri Allen, bassist James Genus and drummer Eric Harland — the personnel featured on From the Round Box, his acclaimed sophomore release from 2000.
“There was something about that lineup that I knew I wanted to revisit someday,” Coltrane says. “The energies of the two groups on Spirit Fiction are unique. The quintet stuff is looser, and the quartet has played together for close to 10 years so it has that particular sound.”
Born on Long Island in 1965, Ravi is the second son of John and Alice Coltrane. His father (who recorded the landmark Blue Train for Blue Note in 1957) died when Ravi was only two. Alice, a renowned composer and pianist, raised Ravi on the West Coast and proved a strong role model in her own right. Ravi had the honor of producing and playing on Alice Coltrane’s Translinear Light, released three years prior to her death in 2007 -
See more at: http://www.bluenotenapa.com/event/tw-eventinfo/Ravi+Coltrane/6987995/#sthash.Ua8FM85K.dpuf
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Every Thursday:
Tim G (guitar) at Tiki Tom's in Walnut Creek
Every Saturday:
Soul Brunch (Anna, drums) at Penrose in Oakland
Friday, March 31st:
The UnOriginals (Tim G) at Vinnie's in Concord
Saturday, April 1st:
Timmy G at Maria Maria in Danville
Friday, April 7th:
Dueling Guitars (Tim G) at Pura Vida Sangira Bar, Livermore
Friday, April 14th:
The UnOriginals (Tim) at Maggie McGarry's in San Francisco
Saturday, April 15th:
The UnOriginals (Tim) at Johnny Foley's in San Francisco
Friday, April 21st:
The UnOriginals (Tim) at Meenar in Danville
Saturday, April 22nd:
Tim G at Maria, Maria in Danville
Friday, April 28th:
The UnOriginals (Tim) at Vinnie's in Concord
Friday, May 5th:
Gringa (Luna) at Bar Fluxus in San Francisco
Friday & Saturday, May 5th & 6th:
The UnOriginals (Tim) at Iron Door Saloon in Groveland
Sunday, May 7th:
Muncie (Anna) at Brewster's in Petaluma
Thursday, May 11th:
A Celebration of Steve Sage at Todos Santos Plaza in Concord
Saturday, May 13th:
Lost Dog Found (Adam) at Monroe Hall in Santa Rosa
Wednesday, May 24th:
Lost Dog Found (Adam) at Downtown Santa Rosa
Saturday, May 27th:
Gringa (Luna) EP release at Elbo Room in San Francisco
CHECK OUT OUR TEACHER'S BANDS ONLINE!
Black Box Radio (Xavier on vocals/guitar)
Brett Hunter Band (Tim M on guitar)
Fast & Vengefully (Tim on guitar/voice, Belinda on fiddle)
Gringa (Luna, drums)
Lost Dog Found (Art, drums, Adam, trumpet)
LunaSol (Judy on violin)
Muncie (Anna on drums)
Push (Tim M. on guitar)
Super Soul Brothers (Neill on guitar)
The Undercovers (Sal on keys, Xavier on guitar/vocals)
West Grand Boulevard (Anna on drums, Mike on bass, Craig on keys, Adam on trumpet)
Zach Bateman & the Coal Minds (Judy, violin)
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The Music Time Academy Staff:
Anna Cucciardo, Monica Lind, Mike Meagher, Adam Borden
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For every new private lessons student that you refer to Music Time Academy, enjoy a 25% discount from your monthly tuition! REFER 4 STUDENTS & GET A FREE MONTH OF LESSONS!
*Offer does not apply to immediate family members or to prior students re-enrolling.25% discount applies to tuition rate for one student only.
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